Day 5 Mekong Delta

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This was supposed to be an early day, as we wanted to catch the Cai Rang Market. So out at 6.30 in the morning and rush through breakfast to leave at 7. We boarded into small low boats which would take us to the market and then into the backwater canals. We weave through an entire market on boats - trading fiercely between each other - yet, I feel 7 o clock is too late. We should have been here at 6 to catch the action at its height. But still its unique. An entire life on water. Families with children. Mostly one floor, some two floors on the boat. And they live and trade and wash their clothes and hang them out - all on the boat. I would have preferred a sampan to take and go over to the boats - to get in and talk to them. Some of the boats come over to sell stuff to us. Arrays of all kinds of tropicl vegetables. Mostly familiar. Some not. We weave in and out watching the frenzied trading, the colours of the vegetables, the lives of the people on the boats - smiling at us, waving at us, calling out or simply going on with their daily lives with bored expressions towards us (crazy tourists).

We weave into the narrow estuaries into their backwater lives. Wider than in Kerala, and more undeveloped and green and more poor. Yes, more poor. I was surprised at how the ' rice bowl of Vietnam' - the place which produces 50% of the rice and vegetables of Vietnam - why in a socialist agrarian system, why were the farmers so poor? Why were the houses so ramshackle - really like hovels? Why such shanty towns in stretches were the lifestyle was atleast a few hundred years old?

Its under the French that the Red River Delta was converted from a wild wetland full of Crocodiles and snakes to a fertile alluvial plain which would supply the riches that would create France as one of the leading colonial powers of the world. They pulled out all stops on their technological fronts to create bridges and roads to tame the difficult terrain - a flat plain seeing devastating floods because of the wild and tumultous Mekong River. The people moved down from north and central plains to this depressed and marshy land and adopted to living with the river, which would become their being, their existance, their life and their deaths. Life would have to be hard, forever battling the river, forever eaking out the maximum you can, from the marshy plains that supprund you and get flooded continuously leaving behind richly fertile alluvial as the river receded. So though food must be abundant, communication would have needed to morph to the landscape and the people would be forever at the mercy of nature and the river. May be daily life was hard enough, without having the time to evolve an architecture suited to the surrounds, refined lifestyles, art forms. There are many craftforms which flourish in the area, nurtured by the lifestyle, the requirements of their unique ways. Music and dance of tribal nature meanders the way river songs and music would do - peppered with stories of simple village life battling everyday living - the sorrows and joys, the simples and complexities of community life. The music we heard in a show, reverberated the river, even if the singers were mediocre and the musicians uninterested.

We reach a fruit orchard where we sample several fruits - mostly known to us, some unknown. The pineapple is less sweet than the ones back home and so I like them. The others say that the papaya was out of the world. We walk around the orchard - trees - trees with tiny orange like fruits. Then we boarded the boat again to return back through the market to the bus. Now it was time for us to return. Quick lunch and we have a stop over at the Vin Longh market, where they sell everything under the sun - rats, turtles, snakes, all kinds of shell sea food. The vegetable market looked like our Broadway. And we found some of the most amazing guavas we had ever eaten.

We reached back HCMC by 6 in the evening, with just enough time for us to go to the train booking agency againto book our night train from Hue to Ha Noi for the 7th night. This time we managed to get a cabin to ourselves. Then to Ben Thanh market for dinner, where we had the most amazing grilled pork with rice paper.

We had been told that the train station would be 40 dongs away, and my good encounter with taxis last night had bouyed our confidence. But this was to be our first brush with scams of Vietnam. Our mistake - we had been warned to stick with Vinasun or Mai Linh. We got into Vina Taxi, and that guy with a cooked meter took us around till the meter read 110 dongs. We had overpacked the luggage - so the journey was as uncomfortable as it was unnecessary.

We reached the station with a lot of time to spare. We were booked on the 11.30 train at night and the trains would come in by 10 pm. The soft sleeper compartments were easy to find, and we settled in with some effort. The compartments were much smaller than our Indian trains, the train being a meter guage instead of a broad guage one. The toilets, though dirty when we reached, was cleaned up fast enough and the attendent cum ticket checker cum cleaner cum everything gave us clean sheets to make our beds. The compartment was full of kids, so Vietnam seems to be a really popular place with children.

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